波蘭女詩人辛波絲卡作品賞析
Scepticism was her watchword. She eschewed political causes; her fight was "against the bad poet who is prone to usingtoo many words". Her favourite phrase was "I don't know". She told the Nobel audience: "It's small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended." Without it, she said, Isaac Newton would have gobbled apples rather than pondering the force that makes them drop. Her compatriot Marie Sklodowska-Curie would have "wound up teaching chemistry at some private high school for young ladies from good families."
辛波絲卡常把“懷疑論”掛在嘴邊。她有意避開政治運動，鬥爭對象常是那些“話多的詩人”。她最喜歡的短語是“不知道”。 諾貝爾獎授獎演說時，她如此說道：這兩個詞雖然小，卻插上了有力的翅膀，擴大了我們內心中的生活範圍，還有我們這小小地球懸於其中的天地。如果伊薩克•牛頓沒有對自己說“我不知道”，便不會去想哪種力量使其落下，最多也只不過躬下身去拾起來，津津有味地吃下去；而同胞居里夫人則願“在私立高中教導貴少婦化學而終此一生”。
An accretion of answers
答案徒增
It was the same for poets. Each poem was a kind of answer, but as soon as the last full stop hit the page the result seemed inadequate. "So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paper clip by literary historians and called their 'oeuvre'."
“不知道”同樣適用於詩人。每首詩都含有一種解釋，當最後一個句號躍於紙上，答案卻顯得並不充分。“這種不充分使個別詩人不滿意自己的創作，於是詩人們不懈地努力着，總有一天，整個詩人羣體連續寫作的所有詩歌， 所有不充分不滿意的加總文學史家於是給他的作品夾上一個大的夾子，美其名曰“詩作”
Her own output was slender in quantity and lean in style. For all her erudition, she did not come across as intimidatingly brainy (unlike some other Polish post-war poets). Schoolchildren learn her poems by heart, like this one about a bereaved pet.
作品較少的辛波絲卡以文風簡潔見長。和其他戰後波蘭詩人不同，儘管她學識過人，卻不被視爲天才。學童個個熟記她的詩詞，這首悼念死去的寵物就是一例。
Die—you can't do that to a cat.
Since what can a cat do
in an empty apartment?
Climb the walls?
Rub up against the furniture?
Nothing seems different here
but nothing is the same.
Nothing's been moved
but there's more space.
And at night-time no lamps are lit.
害死一隻貓——你不能這麼幹。
那麼在一所空房子裏
一隻貓能夠做什麼？
爬牆？
抑或擦着傢俱走貓步？
看似這裏並無二異，
卻都變了位置。
什麼也沒移動過
可空間竟然大了。
夜裏無燈點亮。
